Everything I know firsthand from my 40 years as a resident of Laguna and as a Friendship Shelter board member for more than 15 years was confirmed Sunday night, June 15 by an episode of “60 Minutes.” Anderson Cooper’s piece shows dozens of communities in this country providing housing for their most vulnerable homeless people.

It is a startling fact that it is more expensive to a community to walk past a homeless person on the street than it is to provide basic housing for the most needy individuals who has been without a home for more than a year and in need of the most basic assistance. The most ill and desperate of these individuals will most often die on the street without basic housing and medical care.

Please equip yourselves with the facts. There will be a public forum on permanent supportive housing this Saturday, June 21, at 11 a.m. at the Laguna Beach Woman’s Club.

Friendship Shelter is doing everything possible to inform the public of what is being proposed, yet there is so much misinformation out there. Here’s your chance to get it straight from the source that has spent 26 years working in this arena.